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Overview

The Alcalde of the Monterey District of Alta CA, Walter Colton (1797-1851), completed work on this Neo-Classical town hall on 03/08/1849. The VT-born Colton was a US Navy chaplain who served as the region's first Anglo-American alcalde (a civic magistrate or mayor) from 1846 until 1849. He described the hall and its completion in his text, "Three Years in California," "Thursday, March 8, 1849. The town hall, on which I have been at work for more than a year, is at last finished. It is built of a white stone, quarried from a neighboring hill, and which easily takes the shape you desire. The lower apartments are for schools; the hall over them-- seventy feet by thirty--is for public assemblies. The front is ornamented with a portico, which you enter from the hall. It is not an edifice that would attract any attention among public buildings in the United States; but in California it is without a rival. It has been erected out of the slender proceeds of town lots, the labor of the convicts, taxes on liquor shops, and fines on gamblers." (See Walter Colton, in "Three Years in California," quoted in City of Monterey Museums, "Colton Hall Museum," accessed 09/12/2016.)

Building History

Between 09/05/1849 until 11/13/1849, the new State of California held its Constitutional Convention at Colton Hall in Monterey, CA. Forty-eight delegates participated in the effort to draft the constitution, most landowners and/or lawyers. Five of the 48 had been born abroad.

PCAD id: 2509